Health Care Political Cartoon

Can’t link directly to the cartoon, so am posting a low-res image below and you can go to cartoonist RJ Matson’s site to find the full-sized version. Both insightful and sad at the same time – and likely a reason that any government-run system will not be an improvement on the current system.

You should read the arguments for and against over at The Angry Pharmacist. Some good points for both sides.

I’m Australian and personally, while we have our problems, I think our system is 100x better and more efficient (particularly from a pharmacy point of view), but as The Angry Pharmacist said, American’s have a “take take take” mentality which I don’t think will suit universal health care.

By letting politicians and bureaucrats run anything how could it look any different. I am from Boston and just witnessed what they made the “Big Dig” look like. Unfortunately most of us won’t live long enough to pay for it.

We need to look at the systems that do work: Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland. None of these countries uses a government-run, Medicare-like health insurance plan. They all rely on purely private, nonprofit or for-profit insurers that are goaded by tight regulation to work toward socially desired ends. The problem is America’s private health insurers would not be willing to support or tolerate the tight regulation required for that approach. They are too busy getting fabulously rich and dictating who and what is covered.

If we want change, we must be the agents of change. How many of us are throwing up our hands in exasperation? How many MD’s are there pushing policy changes? Not many, too proud/lazy/greedy/unindated (?) to use our time for such boardroom boredom…I challenge each of us to carve out just 1% of our daily lives to make the effort…